Thailand Journal 2011 #7

Today we got a W-O-R-K-O-U-T! Due to scheduling conflicts at the elementary school, the team members who usually go there are joining us for the remainder of this week at the farm. It was great having the whole team in one place and meant considerably less driving to and from all the projects so we could really focus on the work at hand on the farm.

And work it was!!! Just as we were driving to the work site the first dump-truck load of gravel was delivered. Unfortunately, when the driver tried to turn his massive truck around he did so in the freshly tilled soil where the newest crop of corn had just been planted. As I’m sure you’ve already imagined, he got STUCK. Really really STUCK. So a lot of time was lost trying to help the driver get unstuck. Doing so meant dumping a large portion of his load in the corn field. The team then started putting the gravel under the truck wheels. The ruts were so deep they covered nearly a quarter of the height of the tires. What a mess. But a great cheer went up when the driver finally rolled her outta there! He won’t be using that spot to turn around anymore.

We first set about loading the pile of gravel dumped in the cornfield into the pickup we use. To do that the team organized into a “chain gang,” which proved to be fairly efficient. After the dump truck unloaded the rest of its load in a place we actually wanted it, we moved to that new location and started moving the pile of gravel onto the washed-out road. And it was hard work in the hot sun. We got two truckloads of gravel spread before breaking for lunch.

After lunch four of us returned to the farm to see what more we could do. By now the sun was hotter than ever and the humidity was high, but this team has some real troopers. Lexie, Jen, Lorraine, and I braved the weather and started in on the third delivered pile of gravel. We had to pace ourselves a bit better than we did this morning. Then Nang joined the group and the five of us conquered that whole dump-truck load of gravel in just about an hour. Just as we finished the rains came – the timing was amazing.

We barely had time to get back to the university for supper, change clothes and head back into Muak Lek for the evening English Camp. I don’t know how Lexie and Jen managed to still have so much energy to share with those kids but they and the rest of the team did a great job again tonight. We skipped the night market so that we could maybe turn in a little earlier tonight and get some rest before we hit the ground running again in the morning.